CLEVELAND, Ohio — Attorneys suing drug companies over the nation’s opioid epidemic said a federal judge in Cleveland should not allow the companies to pursue sanctions against Ohio’s attorney general and other lawyers who appeared on “60 Minutes."

The lawyers, all part of an executive committee for the scores of lawsuits currently being heard in federal court in Cleveland, said in a filing Tuesday that Attorney General and Governor-elect Mike DeWine and two other lawyers said nothing improper in their interviews for a Dec. 16 segment on the CBS news-magazine show. They did not identify any confidential information disclosed in the case or any court order violated, the plaintiffs’ attorney claim.

Moreover, their position that the plaintiffs are trying to unduly taint potential jurors for a trial set for September ignores the drug companies’ own efforts to influence public opinion, the filing says.

“Certainly, this Court will need to take steps, at trial, to ensure that juror decisions are based only on the evidence presented in court, but attempting to silence discussion of these issues in the public forum is neither proper nor warranted,” the court filing says.

It says drug companies have also engaged in campaigns to influence public opinion, which includes McKesson’s response to the “60 Minutes” segment on its website and Purdue Pharma’s decision to take out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that say the company is doing its part to combat the opioid epidemic.

Finally, the motion says Purdue Pharma took “less transparent” steps to sway public opinion. This included a background interview company lawyer Mark Cheffo participated in with reporters for a Bloomberg News story that ran in July about how much lawyers for the plaintiffs may make off the litigation if it is successful. The background interview was detailed in an email produced during discovery, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

“Mr. Cheffo apparently remains free to whisper in the press’s ear, while he seeks to gag attorneys on the public side from speaking openly,” the motion states.

Counsel for several drug manufacturers and distributors asked U.S. District Judge Dan Polster on Friday to impose a gag order and sanctions on DeWine and attorneys Mike Moore and Burton LeBlanc for the statements they made on “60 Minutes” about potential jury verdicts and information from a government database that tracks drug shipments and sales. They described the statements as unethical and violations of protective orders the judge imposed.

The plaintiffs' lawyers called the sanctions motion “blatantly self-serving and improper” and a distraction from trial preparation and settlement talks, on which Polster has urged both sides to focus.

More importantly, the attorneys say DeWine, Moore and LeBlanc’s statements “were entirely true, were on a topic of great public importance, and were not protected by court order.”

The filing notes that DeWine, Moore and LeBlanc will respond to the sanctions request on their own should Polster allow the companies to pursue it.

The trial Polster scheduled for September are for claims made by Cuyahoga and Summit counties and the cities of Cleveland and Akron. The lawsuits accuse pharmaceutical companies of downplaying the addictive nature of powerful opioids and painkillers that are largely attributed to one of the deadliest drug epidemics in U.S. history.